1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transflective (semitransmissive) liquid crystal display device in which both a reflective region and a transmissive region are provided in each pixel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Because liquid crystal display (hereinafter simply referred to as “LCD”) devices have advantages such as thin thickness and low power consumption, the LCD devices are currently widely in use as a computer monitor and a monitor for a portable information device. In an LCD, liquid crystal is sealed between a pair of substrates and alignment of the liquid crystal positioned between the substrates is controlled by electrodes formed on the substrates to realize a display. Unlike CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) display devices and electroluminescence (hereinafter simply referred to as “EL”) display devices, fundamentally, the LCD is not self-emissive, and, therefore, requires a light source for displaying an image for an observer.
In a transmissive LCD, a transparent electrode is employed as the electrodes to be formed on the substrates, a light source is provided at the back or side of a liquid crystal display panel and an amount of transmission of light from the light source is controlled in the liquid crystal panel to achieve a bright display even in a dark surroundings. However, because the light source is always being switched on to achieve display, power consumption by the light source is unavoidable, and, moreover, there is a disadvantage that sufficient contrast cannot be secured in an environment with intense ambient light such as outdoors during daytime.
In a reflective LCD, on the other hand, ambient light such as the sun and the indoor light is used as the light source. The ambient light entering the liquid crystal panel is reflected by a reflective electrode formed on a substrate on a side of a non-observation surface. A display is realized by controlling, for each pixel, the amount of emission light from the liquid crystal panel of the light which enters the liquid crystal layer and is reflected by the reflective electrode. Because the reflective LCD uses the ambient light as the light source, no power is consumed by the light source unlike the transmissive LCD and, consequently, has a very low power consumption. The reflective LCD has a characteristic that a sufficient contrast can be obtained when the environment is bright such as the outdoors, but the display cannot be viewed when there is no ambient light.
Recently, a transflective (semitransmissive) LCD has been proposed and attracted much attention as a display that can easily be seen outdoors and also in a dark environment. The transflective LCD has both a reflective function and a transmissive function as shown in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Hei 11-101992 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-255399. In a transflective LCD, a transmissive region and a reflective region are provided within a pixel region to obtain both the transmissive function and the reflective function.
Because the transflective LCDs have superior visibility both outdoors and under dark environment, the use of the transflective LCD as a display, for example, of a portable information device is very effective.
However, in a portable information device, various viewing conditions can be considered, and the viewing angle must be widened in order to achieve display of high quality in any of the various viewing conditions (in particular, various viewing angles).
In addition, in a transflective LCD, because the semi-transmissivity is achieved by dividing a pixel into a transmissive region and a reflective region, the transmission characteristic and the reflection characteristic are lower than that in the transmissive LCD and that in the reflective LCD, respectively. Therefore, in order to improve the display quality in each display region (transmissive region and reflective region), it is necessary to achieve a higher contrast in both regions.
However, in the field of transflective LCDs, efforts have been devoted for improving a structure for realizing both a transmissive mechanism and the reflective mechanism in one structure, and attempts have not been made for improvement in the display quality such as widening of the viewing angle and improvement of the contrast.